After his big day, Meachem talked about his performance and the Saints’ perfect record.

How much does being 8-0 mean to you?

“Hard work is paying off. Carolina is really good, and for a lot of years they had our number. We were down in the first half, and a lot of teams don’t come back from 17-6. We were happy to be able to do it. This feels great. We’re 8-0. Our dreams are coming true. But we can’t stop here. We’ve got to take it one play at a time and one day at a time. I’m just enjoying the ride.”

Why does this team stay so composed when it falls behind?

“It comes from the coaching. Last year if you take a look at the film, if stuff was going wrong, you could see coach (Sean Payton) kind of angry. This year if stuff goes wrong, Coach is still calm, so it keeps us calm. We feed off him and we feed off each other. You look at Drew (Brees) a lot, and he’s steady calm. He’s not anxious. He keeps saying, ‘it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen, just slow down, it’s going to happen.’ And it happened.”

So you saw no reason to panic when you were down 14-0?

“When we got down in Miami 24-3, nobody panicked. This Carolina team is a great team. They’ve been having our number for a lot of years. We said the only way we can come back in this game is to do what we’ve got to do, we’ve got to beat our man in front of us. Everybody, from offense to defense to special teams, if you beat your guy, you win the game.”

Does it make it even better that this team is winning games in a lot of different ways this year?

“We have a lot of confidence in ourselves, but we know that we have to take it one game and one practice at a time. ‘Oh, we’re going to be 10-0,’ no, you can’t say that. We have to get ready for St. Louis.”